This 'n That

My SAFF workshop materials are done and in the mail, and my tax prep is nearly done (Procrastination is my middle name- you can look it up), so now I can play a bit before I leave... in 19 days...

I love everything about going to SAFF, but one of the things I love the most has nothing to do with the festival, which happens to coincide with prime leaf season in North Carolina. The leaves are stunningly gorgeous there, and the season very nicely waits until I arrive before swinging into full gear.

 Around here, we're about at peak color. We get very little red in my neck of the woods, but these little sumacs brighten the creek banks.

 And we may not do red, but we definitely do yellow.

 Beautiful, beautiful yellow.

 When  I wasn't leaf-peeping, I was knitting. I started these mitered-square-cuff fingerless mittens in my class at NCFF. The yarn is Pulled Taffy, from Decadent Fibers, and it has the perfect short-length variegation for this pattern.

 I also finished reading Book #2 in The Parasol Protectorate series. Changeless strayed a bit more into our century in phrase and perception, but was still a hoot. I can't say much about the plot, or the twist ending, because it constitutes a major spoiler. I enjoyed it greatly.

 Blameless takes up almost immediately after the close of Changeless. I can't say anything about the plot because, once again, it's a total spoiler for those who have not read the earlier books. I will say that I heartily dislike the covers- Alexia Tarabotti may well be an uncommon woman of the Victorian Era (what with having no soul, and cavorting with werewolves and vampires and such), but she would never, ever adopt the weird twisty posture of the cover models. I want to poke their bustles with my parasol, and tell them to stand up straight.

 Son of Tarzan was a really interesting book- a bit out of the character of the earlier ones in the series. It's just as full of rip-roaring adventure, daring feats, dastardly enemies, sly humor, handsome hunks, and jungle travel as all of the rest. But this one spans about 10 years, and opens when Lord and Lady Greystoke's son is 10 years old. Jane learns the hard way, that you can take the boy out of the jungle, but you can't take the jungle out of the boy, even if the boy has never been to the jungle, or been allowed to hear about it. And given that these books were written in the second decade of the 20th Century, it's interesting that Tarzan and Jane would both be about 40 by the time the book ends (and 40 in 1913 was not like 40 now- they'd be considered Elderly at that age). That said, the book is as entertaining as the rest.

It's not clear at all where in the timeline that Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar fits. There's no mention of anything that happened in Son of Tarzan in this book, and Jane is described as a young, beautiful woman- in fact, she's called a girl quite often. So I am thinking that this book takes place before the action in Son of Tarzan (or perhaps in between, during the early part of those 10 years). At any rate, the book is a fun read, and I now know that amnesia makes Tarzan stupid.